Through Sun 8/21
The closer you sit the better at Truvy’s Beauty Shop, aka Steel Magnolias. It’s the first joint Cleveland Play House/PlayhouseSquare production and it’s now in the Allen Theatre for three months. Just pull up a chair (in your imagination, of course) and listen in as the ladies gossip (bless their hearts) and support each other in a nostalgia-inducing set designed by Vicki Smith.
This feel-good 1987 play, an off-Broadway success by author Robert Harling, antedates the better-known 1989 film version (with Dolly Parton running Truvy’s). It shows sisterhood at its best and gossip at its most harmless in a small Louisiana town. It takes place in an era when ladies still relied on a weekly shampoo and set, followed by a stint under the big bonnet-shaped hair dryer.
So it’s a women-only territory (the men get the barbershop) where gals can relax and (literally) let their hair down. Steel Magnolias shows the good side of small-town life and though much is sticky sweet, director Laura Kepley does allow her characters to lose their tempers on occasion (thank goodness!).
The flashily dressed Truvy (a convincingly big-haired Elizabeth Meadows Rouse) runs her beauty parlour like a friendly social worker/bestie. Everything takes place in her shop, but we hear things from outside — especially the gunshots that open the show. (No, there’s not a dangerous crime taking place.)
As the play opens, Truvy announces that it’s a special day and that the beauty parlour is soon to be filled with wedding frenzy. Shelby (Allison Layman) is getting married. A Julia Roberts lookalike, Layman embodies her character’s lovely wholesome stubbornness. Shelby’s hovering mother M’Lynn (a fluttery Erika Rolfsrud) comes across as concerned about Shelby’s health, but happy for her. Clairee (a friendly Charlotte Booker) and Ouiser (the comic, confident, and appealingly assertive Mary Stout) pop in too. Stout’s irrepressible Ouiser adds necessary spice and spark to cut some of the play’s tendency to cloying sweetness. The last of the six is practically homeless, new trade school graduate Annelle (a sincere Devon Caraway). Annelle’s job tryout (accompanied by plenty of hairspray) opens the show.
So that’s the set-up. The rest of the play observes these women as the seasons pass. Short scenes show these six women rejoice when life is good and hold each other up when it’s not. It’s Annabelle (who finds the Lord as she turns her life around) whose simple testimony at the end of the play sums up much of what the story celebrates. That is, “charity,” but it’s a charity shown through love and generosity of spirit rather than in handouts (though Annelle gets those as well). Caraway’s interpretation of Annelle’s new life as a church member takes us from laughing at her — in the style of “isn’t she a cute little hillbilly, bless her heart” — in the early acts to the final scene’s comforting feel good revelation and a “bless her heart, that’s what true love is all about.”
Harling based his story on true events in his own family so the sentiments in it were earned. But it seems to run too long (the first act is 75 minutes, the second another hour), belaboring certain points (yes, ladies need to get their hair done; yes, Shelby’s father shoots his gun impulsively, etc.)
And yes, sigh, some of the accents are terrible. (I’m one of those picky people familiar with local speech that dialect coach Thom Jones complains about.) I was delighted to hear “Louisiana” pronounced appropriately and I even heard a “cain’t” once in awhile, but attempts to both project in the large theater and manage an accent sometimes created a harsh, cartoonish voices. I suspect this play would be better in a more intimate venue because (unless they are shouting) southern ladies manage to sort of dance around vowels and speak much more softly than these actresses were required to do. Rouse, a Dallas native, got it right, but others struggled. (Maybe by the end of the three-month run they will settle in, but Clevelanders will likely never notice anyway.)
Before the show and between acts, in a welcome addition to Harling’s original, Kepley has added songs by strolling musicians, the personable and tuneful Emily Casey and Maggie Lakis.
Steel Magnolias runs through Sun 8/21 in the Allen Theatre as part of Playhouse Square’s KeyBank Broadway Series. For tickets go to playhousesquare.org or call 216-241-6000.
[Written by Laura Kennelly]
[Photo by Roger Mastroianni]
Cleveland, OH 44115